To Reclaim Our Heritage

MELVIN M. NEWLAND, MINISTER
CENTRAL CHRISTIAN, BROWNSVILLE, TX

A. Have you heard? Are you aware that America is at war? William Bennett, former head of the U.S. Dept. of Education, writes, "America is engaged in an on-going & intensifying cultural war. Over the last two decades there has been waged an all-out assault on common sense & on the common values of the American people. We now stand at a crossroads," he writes.

Now if we’re standing at a crossroads, then it seems to me that we, as Christians, need to know what to do, & in what direction to proceed.

In 2 Chronicles 7:14, God tells us. He says "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves & pray & seek my face & turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven & will forgive their sin & will heal their land."

B. In the book of Lamentations, the prophet Jeremiah has witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem, seen its walls torn down, the city in rubble, & its people carried off into captivity in Babylon. Then in the last two verses of Lamentations Jeremiah utters a prayer that comes straight from his heart.

He prays, "Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may return; renew our days as of old unless you have utterly rejected us & are angry with us beyond measure" [Lamentations 5:21-22].

PROP. So this morning I want to talk about some of the things we can do to reclaim the heritage that is ours as Christians. I’ve chosen 5 things for us to consider.

I. WE NEED TO BE INFORMED ABOUT AMERICA’S SPIRITUAL HERITAGE

First of all, we need to be informed about America’s spiritual heritage.

A. History is being rewritten today, & we’re being told that the founding fathers of our country were deists or secular humanists. Now a deist is someone who believes in God, but he believes that God has removed Himself from us & is no longer involved in the happenings of mankind.

ILL. Bette Middler’s song, "From a Distance," describes deist philosophy. It says, "God is watching us as we go to war, as we kill each other. He is watching, but He is watching from a distance. He is no longer involved."

So those who are rewriting history would have us believe that our founding fathers were all deists. They would teach us that our country was founded as a spiritually neutral land, where all religions would be accepted, & one religion would not be regarded as any better than another.

They would also teach us that the founding fathers advocated strict adherence to separation of church & state, that the church should have nothing to do with government, & government should have nothing to do with the church.

B. But none of those things are really true, & you need to know that they are not true. You need to realize that our country has a rich spiritual heritage.

ILL. If you’ve never been, I suggest you go sometime to Jamestown, VA. It is one of the earliest English-speaking settlements in the new world, & it has been carefully restored so that we can see what life was like 350 years ago.

At Jamestown, you’ll discover many interesting things about our country. You’ll learn that when this settlement was first established, most of the people built rather humble huts for their families. But right in the middle of Jamestown they erected